Rontopia

I have 2 questions. im a new owner. i have never owned a vette. I have been reading this forum in my spare time for a week now.

so I have this 86 corvette.no mods, aluminum heads. it has about 98k miles on it. like many first time owners I have a couple of problems that I did not catch when I bought it. thats ok tho as I understand that with a car this age there are going to be problems. so..


engine starts and runs well.. as far as I can tell. idles well. responds well but the guy i bought it from had never changed the injectors. so I was going to put a ohm meter across the leads and see what they read. I believe they should read between 13 and 16 ohms? (im sure they need to be changed out) but I went to pull the cap off the injector and found that to not be as easy as I thought .. so there is a clip I dont know what to do with it..
here is a pic


oil leak..

I tightened the valve covers to 8 libs. they were quite lose. I suspected the covers because I noticed there was a little oil on the intake manifold and when I ran the car I could smell oil burning. but now that i have looked closer. I see there is more going on.

so here are some observations.

when I parked on the drive way 2 days. the driveway has is up hill, not much, maybe a 1.5 feet. there was oil on the driveway about 1 by 3 inches.

I moved the car into the garage. its been there for 4 days. but there is a lot more oil on the floor. it looks like its coming form the oil pan area.

the bottom of the oil pan is oily pretty much everywhere.

there is a lot of oily grungy gook around the back of the distributor. i could not see any fresh oil tho. dont know if this pic will help?

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/i...56720888238786


looking down on the passenger side. looking at the exhaust there is not much discoloration. I was looking for where the oil was hitting the exhaust. looks like there is some hitting the pipe near the back of the engine. the exhaust manifold is clean. the vertical part of the pipe is clean. the horizontal pipe heading toward the rear of the car is clean for about 12 or so inches then turns black for about 3 to 4. so thats where the oil is getting burnt. but my questions is where is it driping from?


I was not prepared for this in the sense that I have not had a muscle car for some 10 years.. wow it gos by. my last muscle car was a 69 roadrunner.(know that these vettes are really true sports cars) but sense then I have lost all my tools one way or another. so.. I don't have ramps or stands or a floor jack for that matter.. I will be picking these up this week.

so some insite and advice is welcome.

Ron

65Z01

First off, congrats on your new '87 Vette...

1-Ping: sounds like the ECM is not properly advancing spark timing.
First look for a connector in the Tan/Blk wire near/below the brake booster; verify that it is not open.

If the connector is in tact it will be very helpful to put a scanner on the ALDL to see what the ECM is "seeing" and if it is doing to cause the ping.
Since it doesn't ping in open loop I strongly suspect an issue with ECM spark control.

2-Oil leak: Two common areas are valve covers & rear china wall below rear of intake base.
First get a very strong light & mirror and try to isolate the leak source.
Also clean the oil pan well to see if the leak is coming from that area.

If valve covers are leaking get a set of Fel Pro Perma-seal gaskets.

If the china wall area you will need to remove the intake base, replace gaskets between base & heads and install new sealant along front rear lands of the china walls. If you need get into this area you will need a top end Fel Pro gasket set, some good RTV or other sealer and can read up on the procedure in this Forum.

Good luck with the issues and enjoy the Vette.

Cliff Harris

Remove the injector connectors by pushing on the clip. Wiggle the connector and pull on it while pushing the clip. The clip snaps into some grooves on the injector. I usually use a large screwdriver, but you can use your thumb. You should measure the injector resistance both cold and hot (hot is the most important -- sometimes they fail when hot). For reference, mine have 114K miles on them and are still working just fine.

It's very common for the intake manifold to leak oil at the rear. The intake gasket sets come with silicone to seal this area. There is also an oil pressure sender and oil pressure switch in that area that can leak (not very common).

Another intake manifold leak source is the water passage that crosses the front of the engine where the thermostat mounts. It leaks at the gasket between the intake manifold and the head. This leak can be into the valley under the intake manifold or into the intake passages into the cylinders.

Rontopia

thanks..

is there a howto on this site for replacing the intake gaskets? I have been reading much about this but could not find a youtube or how to. I have a FSM but to be honest I never like those. in my experience they usually miss a step or tell you do remove some bolt that is not actually on the engine, so you spend hours sometimes just trying to understand what it is the instructions are getting at..

the oil pan may be leaking.. not sure but. something in the back of the engine is. I will get a mirror and have a look tonight after work.

thanks for the help

Calderone

Welcome to the board !
Congrats !!!
Check this

Rontopia

I just thought I would let you guys know..

I spent Saturday reading and re torking some bolts. my oil leaks are not all gone but they are 90% better. I still need to re tork the oil pan, I just could not get under the car yet as I have not picked up a floor jack and stands yet.

I still want to do the injectors but I think I have other problems I want to look into first.
when I shift the car there is a kind of knock in the rear of the car. I thought it was one of the spindle arm bushings that was bad or maybe even gone. I look at them last night they seem fine. when I rock the car back and forth (in gear) there is some drive line (trans, drive line and rear end) slop. on a car this old thats kinda normal but there is a noise that sounds like there is something knocking and its more toward the center of the car. maybe a ujoint? but the car runs smooth under power, or no vibrations.

I will have to get it in the air and have a look. just wondering if there is something common in that area of the car. some other kind of spindle/control arm bushing in the middle?

thanks for your time.

Ron

Joe Gibson

Hi Rontopia,

Congrats on your you new Mistress!!

I also have a Late 86 convertible with the 4+3, this past August I took it on a cross country road trip and was having the following issues:
- Squeaking when shifting
- Lunging at low RPM's
- Clunking in the rear end when shifting (up and Down)
- Clunking in rear when coasting and in gear

Turns out it was the 2 u-joints on the main drive shaft causing the issues.

I've done lots of mods to my Mistress that were weekend projects. I can give ya a list of stuff to do and who to get the parts from cheap.

Send me a PM if interested.

Joe. (Westminster Colorado)

coupeguy2001

Hey Ron, welcome to the forum.
You can retorque the oil pan, but I wouldn't without buying a pan gasket first. These are 1 piece seals, and should never leak. use judgement when tigtening those bolts. Those 26 year old gaskets can split.
On the oil leak, some of these cars came with a water-oil cooler.
This is a round cylinder sandwiched between the block and the oil filter.
THe gasket on the top of the cooler is a red silicone gasket, looks like the gasket on an oil filter.
This gasket compresses after a while, and gives you a nice little oil leak.
The gaskets are discontinued by chevy, but felpro still makes it.
You need to determine if you have one by looking at the oil filter standing by the left front tire, and looking down sort of at the trans area, you can see the filter.
If there is a black spacer about 2 inches thick above the oil filter, you have the cooler, then if you can't tell, go over to the right side, look under the air conditioning compressor, and there should be a "T" in the heater hose, and the hose snakes down to an aluminum tube that goes around the oil pan over to the left side of the engine in front of the oil filter.
Do not be alarmed if it's leaking, hunt down a gasket, and at your next oil change, take the filter off, and undo the nut in the spacer and pull the cooler down, and change the gasket.
About 40 foot Lbs should do it when it goes back together.

just because,
I wouldn't mess with the injectors till you have a problem. If it is running well, address the other problems first. The TPI takes a lot of patience to deal with, so if you can put it off, I would.

Oh, mine's an 86 as well